Structural motifs of biomolecules

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified framework for understanding biomolecular structures by analyzing the marginally compact phase of matter, highlighting the role of anisotropic modules like helices and strands in stabilizing shapes.

Contribution

It presents a novel singularity-free self-interaction model for tubes, explaining how biomolecular shapes are stabilized in the marginally compact phase.

Findings

Tube model resides in the marginally compact phase

Sequence-independent interactions stabilize biomolecular shapes

Unified framework for biomolecular building blocks

Abstract

Biomolecular structures are assemblies of emergent anisotropic building modules such as uniaxial helices or biaxial strands. We provide an approach to understanding a marginally compact phase of matter that is occupied by proteins and DNA. This phase, which is in some respects analogous to the liquid crystal phase for chain molecules, stabilizes a range of shapes that can be obtained by sequence-independent interactions occurring intra- and intermolecularly between polymeric molecules. We present a singularityfree self-interaction for a tube in the continuum limit and show that this results in the tube being positioned in the marginally compact phase. Our work provides a unified framework for understanding the building blocks of biomolecules.